Yona Baguma (DDG) and Godfrey Asea (DoR)

1

NARO Breeding Program Status and Modernization Priorities

Excellence in Breeding Annual Meeting, November 5-7, Steinberger Airport Hotel, Amsterdam

• 16 Public Agricultural Research Institutes (7 NARIs and 9 ZARDIs),

• Staff number of 905 as of July 2019, of which 278 are scientists (> MSc)

NARO’s Researchmandate

1. Crops

2. Forestry

3. Livestock

4. Fisheries

Focus Crops• Cereals (maize, rice sorghum, millets)

• Legumes (Beans, cow pea, pigeon pea)

• Oil crops (ground nuts, sesame, sunflower,

soy bean, oil palm)

• RTBs (cassava, sweet potato, banana, yam)

• Horticultural crops

National Priority/strategic

Commodities (10/15):

High impact export potential:- Coffee, Tea, Fisheries

High potential for import replacement:- Cotton, Veg oil, beef (by-products)

Food/nutrition security & exports:- Maize, Dairy, Cassava, Rice, Banana

NARO Breeding and Deployment Capacity Dashboard

i. Number of breeders: 38 (33 PhDs, 5 MScs)

ii. Number of released varieties: 123 releases last 10 years - 17 crops

iii. Testing sites (2 drought, 16 Mid-altitude optimum sites, 7 highland sites)

iv. Infrastructure (irrigation, agro-machinery, seed processing and storage, phenotyping facilities)

v. Functional databases (BMS, Cassavabase, sweetpotatobase, fieldbook)

vi. 2 Genebanks (Exsitu, insitu - 4 community seed banks)

vii. Strong partnership with Universities/MaRCCI and Seed Companies

Current Status and Linkage with CGIARi. Germplasm exchange and leverage

ii. Traits discovery and deployment

iii. Testing networks (regional trials, screening sites, regional nurseries)

iv. Capacity building (training and infrastructure)

v. Improving seed systems (variety releases, EGS and QA/QC)

vi. Partner in major CGIAR- NARs Projects (AVISA, STMA, NEXTGEN, BBB, AA)

NARO’s Vision for CG-NARs Networks- Crop Dependent

STG 0 STG1 STG 2 STG 3 STG 4 STG 5

NAROCGIAR

NARO

CGIAR

CGIAR

NARO

Vision for NARO Breeding

Guided by NDPIII (Agro-industrialization) and NARO Strategic Plan (Product and

market)

Short-term vision – 5 years (Strengthening breeding pipelines to increase genetic gains)1. Understanding market needs for products including

nutrition and gender2. Breeding program assessment, costing and optimization3. Implement and refine product profiles for pilot crops -

monitor progress based on targets

4. Develop strategies and policies for variety replacement5. Adoption of enabling technologies (Genotyping,

digitized data collection/management, DH/Anther culture, GS, RGC

6. Invest in breeding infrastructure for improved phenotyping (for field and lab platforms, for good data, quality control, seed storage, traceability)

Vision for NARO Breeding

Long-term– 5 - 10 years(Productivity gain increases on-farm)

1. Genetic gain on-farm – At least 1%/year genetic gain to bridge the gap between current pop growth (3.3%) and Ag. growth (2.3%)

2. Continuous capacity building in enabling technologies (rapidly changing)

3. Pro-active variety replacements and improved seed systems

Current engagement with EiB

i. Trainings and active engagement with Global EiB leads

ii. Product profiles developed for pilot crops- (maize, cassava, sweet potato and ground nut) and stage gate for cassava

iii. Assessment of breeding pipelines (maize, cassava, sweetpotato, g/nuts- improvement plan development for groundnuts) and mechanization at Namulonge

iv. Planned on-site consultant- 4 months to support modernization

v. Genotyping lines and populations – HTGP, IGSS

Implementation stage gate system – a case of cassava

Product design Discovery Early Development

Late Development Pre-release Release and

deployment

Stag

e 0 Market research,

Product Design, PPC

Stag

e 1 Parent selection

and production of new genetic variation St

age

2 Clone development, small plot testing (few reps and locations)

Stag

e 3 Advanced clones

selections in replicated multi-environment trials

Stag

e 4 National

Performance Trials and On-Farm trials/TRICOTs

Stag

e 5 Official release

and product launch

C0 (13 clones) planned for

TRICOT

ü C1 (63 white-fleshed clones)

in AYT

ü C0 (24 pVACclones) in AYT

C2 (6,469 white-fleshed clones) in

SET

C1 (640 pVAC clones) in

CET)

NextGen Survey

Division, RTB Foods

2019, 2020, and 2022

What can EiB help with in Future?

i. Continuous review of breeding programs (end-to-end) and implementation of improvement plans

ii. Share best practices and experiences between public and private sector programs including mechanization

iii. Support training, retooling, exchange visits, attachments and consultancies

iv. Subsidized genotyping costs with vendors based on economies of scale across EiB members

v. Sustainable support to implement and optimize breeding pipelines

vi. CGIAR modernization should go hand-in-hand with NARs modernization

Thankyou